City gouges too deep in slots talks

There is no reason to do any deep posthumous analysis of why the Worcester slot parlor proposal is dead. And please don’t buy the politically correct reasons being given by both sides.

“This has been a complex undertaking, with a multitude of factors impacting the project including the high state tax rate for the (slots) license, the reasonable mitigation requests from the city and escalating development and operating costs,” Neil Bluhm, the developer and chairman of Mass Gaming & Entertainment, said in announcing the failure of his company and the city to finalize a host agreement.

“Both sides worked very hard to meet the reasonable expectations of the parties but we could not get a deal and felt it was in our collective best interests to conclude without a host agreement,” City Manager Mike O’Brien concurred.

But no matter how much they try to camouflage it, the fact remains that there will be no slots parlor in Worcester because the city got too greedy.

Like the idiot who won a million dollars only to lose it all trying to win a bigger windfall, the city’s appetite for increasingly bigger portions of its billionaire suitor’s money became insatiable.

The developer, who had agreed to buy and clean up the site of the proposed slots parlor, and to subsidize a much-needed full-service hotel in the city to the tune of about $1 million a year, found himself being played more often than a slot machine in a Las Vegas casino.

I am exaggerating, but only slightly, when I say that among other requests the developer was being asked to turn the Canal District into the French Quarter of the East; to reconstruct the illogical and maddening Kelley Square into the most pleasing and efficient intersection in the country and to attract scores of other businesses to the city.

He was being asked to hire only Worcester residents, to purchase goods and services from local businesses, to pay full taxes on the property, to create a second division of officers within the Worcester Police Department to ensure safety around his property, to establish his own treatment and prevention services for gambling addicts, and to essentially make the local economy immune from recession or any economic downturn.

“There were expectations that this hotel/slot parlor was going to generate all this money that would take care of all the issues and problems that we have ... In any urban setting you are always looking for that silver bullet,” City Councilor Phil Palmieri acknowledged in a candid conversation with yours truly.

But the slots parlor proposal was an opportunity, not a silver bullet. But that opportunity was not fully explored because, as Mr. Palmieri noted, the process lacked focus — a priority around which to rally public support.

Indeed, an argument could be made that it would have been in the city’s interest to make construction of the full-service hotel the top priority in negotiating a host agreement. City officials have often talked about the necessity of having such a hotel for its marketing potential, and since it was understood that such a hotel couldn’t survive on its own, getting the developer to subsidize it and even to secure the loan for its construction would have been a substantial win for the city.

In the end, the hotel, perhaps the biggest potential jackpot in the deal for the city, was thrown aside as greed took over.

And now that the developer has walked away with his proposed $240 million investment in the city, the creation of more than 600 jobs and millions of dollars in property tax revenue, we have one of those in charge of economic development on the City Council, Rick Rushton, saying, “I am proud of the way everything was handled.”

Well, at least we know where to find the real one-armed bandits in this city.